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Quotes About "Palestine"

Remember:
Israel is bad!
Its existence keeps reminding Muslims what a bunch of losers they are.
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"There will be no peace until they will love their children more than they hate us."

-Golda Meir-
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'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ‎violence. If the Jews put ‎down their weapons ‎today, there would be no﻿ ‎more Israel'‎

~Benjamin Netanyahu~
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"Peace of us means the destruction of Israel.
We are preparing for an all out war, a war which will last for generations.

~Yasser Arafat~
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Throughout his authorized biography (Alan Hart, Arafat: terrorist or peace maker) Arafat asserts at least a dozen times: "The Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel."

~ Yasser Arafat ~
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"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel. For our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of Palestinian people, since Arab national interest demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism".

~ Zahir Muhse'in ~

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Israel is only place in Middle East where Arabs are entitled to full democratic rights

Eddie Yair Fraiman

The Tunisian revolution began when a green grocer, Mohamed Bouazizi, self-immolated after suffering from severe police harassment. Through this brave, desperate act, he was transformed into the symbol of the new Arab revolution. Reflecting on Bouazizi’s ultimate act of protest, one can hardly conceive of what atmosphere and surroundings would compel an individual to resort to such an extreme.

The Arab states in the Middle East are ruled by dictators who act without mercy towards their own people and deprive them of their basic civil democratic rights. The anger rooted in decades of oppression and repression has finally bubbled up to the surface and erupted in the so-called “Arab Spring,” the wave of revolution and protest sweeping the region.

This cathartic expression of Arab peoples demanding their rights has in turn been met not with reform or concession, but with brutal, bloody crackdowns. The images broadcast from our regional neighbors are hard to watch: Live fire directed at protesters with lethal intentions in Syria and Yemen; missile fire on rebel and civilian positions in Libya; shelling, rape and mass killings of civilians by regime forces in Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria.

Civilian protests and freedom of expression are basic principles integral to and respected in any advanced state. The violence unleashed against protesters is antithetical to these important values, but reflective of the old patterns that Arab regimes have consistently employed; brutality and political repression have been the hallmark of Arab political control for more than half a century.

Even those states which offer some democratic privileges to their citizens are in fact engaged in a type of political theater - their elections are farcical in that the despotic leadership fails to allow any real pluralism. Opposition groups are denied true free expression and a real, effective voice.

Full civil rights

The extreme events we witnessed in recent weeks are contrary to all democratic and enlightenment principles. But they are the expected response from regimes that have already long demonstrated their total disregard for human rights and international values. Exactly as happened after Hamas took control of the Gaza strip in June 2007, these regimes have shown the inevitable outcome that results when non- and anti-democratic forces are given free rein over their populations.

Perhaps ironically, the only place in the Middle East where Arabs enjoy full democratic rights is the State of Israel. Arab citizens of Israel take for granted their freedom of movement, freedom of speech, the right to elect and be elected, freedom of assembly and protest - in short, all the individual and collective rights that are the essential and unassailable prerogatives of any citizen in any democratic state.

These rights don’t exist in any Arab state, but in Israel all of us, Jewish and Arab citizens alike, receive full civil rights. Everyone is equal in the eyes of Israeli law; all receive national insurance, education and national health care. Israel’s Arab citizens are also afforded affirmative action measures in educational institutions and government offices.

A poll published two months ago showed that a majority of east Jerusalem Arabs prefer to stay under Israeli rule rather than come under Palestinian Authority control. Many claimed they would be willing to leave their homes and relocate into Israel if their cities are transferred to PA control. Those living in Jerusalem are familiar with the phenomenon of east Jerusalem residents moving into Jewish neighborhoods - a trend in large part fueled by the fear that certain Arab communities in the city may be turned over to the PA. Apparently, Palestinian Arabs understand what we Israelis have often forgotten in recent years - the uniqueness of the state of Israel in the wild east.

Maybe the revolution in the Arab world will bring change, and the death and slaughter will bring about freedom of expression and, eventually, democracy. Alternatively, Islamic organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which represent a significant portion of the opposition, may take power, and true democracy will remain a distant dream.

One thing is certain: Israeli Arabs have nothing to worry about. They can freely exercise their democratic rights, and nobody will shoot them in the streets.

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More Quotes About "Palestine"

"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it".

"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria".

- Representant of Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, 1956 -

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Concerning the Holy Land, the chairman of the Syrian Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919 stated:

"The only Arab domination since the Conquest in 635 c.e. hardly lasted, as such, 22 years".

"There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilea); not for thirty miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lies a mouldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent, mournful expanse... a desolation... We never saw a human being on the whole route... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country... Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes... desolate and unlovely...".

- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad", 1867 -

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"In 1590 a 'simple English visitor' to Jerusalem wrote: 'Nothing there is to bescene but a little of the old walls, which is yet remayning and all the rest is grasse, mosse and weedes much like to a piece of rank or moist grounde'.".

- Gunner Edward Webbe, Palestine Exploration Fund,

Quarterly Statement, p. 86; de Haas, History, p. 338 -

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"The land in Palestine is lacking in people to till its fertile soil".

"The Arabs themselves cannot be considered but temporary residents. They pitched their tents in its grazing fields or built their places of refuge in its ruined cities. They created nothing in it. Since they were strangers to the land, they never became its masters. The desert wind that brought them hither could one day carry them away without their leaving behind them any sign of their passage through it".

- Comments by Christians concerning the Arabs in Palestine in the 1800s -

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"Then we entered the hill district, and our path lay through the clattering bed of an ancient stream, whose brawling waters have rolled away into the past, along with the fierce and turbulent race who once inhabited these savage hills. There may have been cultivation here two thousand years ago. The mountains, or huge stony mounds environing this rough path, have level ridges all the way up to their summits; on these parallel ledges there is still some verdure and soil: when water flowed here, and the country was thronged with that extraordinary population, which, according to the Sacred Histories, was crowded into the region, these mountain steps may have been gardens and vineyards, such as we see now thriving along the hills of the Rhine. Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride".

- William Thackeray in "From Jaffa To Jerusalem", 1844 -

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"The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population".

- James Finn, British Consul in 1857 -

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"The area was underpopulated and remained economically stagnant until the arrival of the first Zionist pioneers in the 1880's, who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The country had remained "The Holy Land" in the religious and historic consciousness of mankind, which associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish people. Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other immigrants - both Jewish and Arab. The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts... Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen... The plows used were of wood... The yields were very poor... The sanitary conditions in the village [Yabna] were horrible... Schools did not exist... The rate of infant mortality was very high... The western part, toward the sea, was almost a desert... The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants".